1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus in which a plurality of processing modules is connected to a bus in a ring shape, a method thereof, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to realize high-speed pipeline processing, there is a conventional method for dividing a series of data processing corresponding to the pipeline processing, allocating the divided data processing to a plurality of modules, and connecting the modules to a bus according to an order of a flow of the processing.
In order to reduce traffic in the bus when the modules are connected to the bus in a ring shape, there is a method for determining a load on the module for receiving data and restricting data to be received from other processing modules when the load is high.
For example, there is a method in which a module restricts reception of the data from other modules by transmitting a message and deleting and replaying a token to reduce the traffic of the bus (See Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2-283142 and 10-228445).
Japanese Patent No. 2541697 discusses a method in which the data is input at timing not to collide with data circulating in the ring shaped bus to increase an efficiency of an entire processing when the pipeline processing is performed using the modules connected to the ring shaped bus.
However, since techniques discussed in Japanese Patent Applications Laid-Open Nos. 2-283142 and 10-228445 stop a flow of the data in the ring shaped bus, the data to be supplied to the module is also stopped even if other modules can be processed in parallel, so that a processing speed may be decreased as a whole.
When the technique discussed in Japanese Patent No. 2541697 is used for the ring shaped bus, a processing efficiency may be decreased as a whole. One of the reasons is that appropriate timing for supplying the data before all data sets necessary for the processing are obtained is different from that after all the data sets necessary for the processing are obtained.